Pintle
Encyclopedia
Gudgeon
A gudgeon is a circular fitting, often made of metal, which is affixed to a surface. It allows for the pivoting of another fixture. It is generally used with a pintle, which is a pin which pivots in the hole in the gudgeon. As such, a gudgeon is a simple bearing.-Winged gudgeons:A winged gudgeon...
, which is used as part of a pivot or hinge.
A pintle/gudgeon set is used in many spheres, for example: in sailing
Sailing
Sailing is the propulsion of a vehicle and the control of its movement with large foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to move the boat relative to its surrounding medium and...
to hold the rudder
Rudder
A rudder is a device used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft or other conveyance that moves through a medium . On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw and p-factor and is not the primary control used to turn the airplane...
onto the boat
Boat
A boat is a watercraft of any size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is a...
; in transportation a pincer-type device clamps through a lunette ring on the tongue of a trailer; in controllable solid rocket motors a plug moves into and out of the motor throat to control thrust.
In transportation
Road transport
Road transport or road transportation is transport on roads of passengers or goods. A hybrid of road transport and ship transport is the historic horse-drawn boat.-History:...
, a pintle hitch is a type of tow hitch
Tow hitch
A tow hitch is a device attached to the chassis of a vehicle for towing or a towbar to an aircraft nose gear, or paired main gears....
that uses a tow ring configuration to secure to a hook or a ball combination for the purpose of towing an unpowered vehicle
Trailer (vehicle)
A trailer is generally an unpowered vehicle pulled by a powered vehicle. Commonly, the term trailer refers to such vehicles used for transport of goods and materials....
.
As a weapon mount
Weapon mount
A weapon mount is a weapon component used to secure an armament. Weapon mounts can be broken down into two categories: static mounts and non-static mounts.-Static mount:...
a pintle-mount is used with machine gun
Machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....
s as the mounting hardware that mates the machine gun to a vehicle or tripod. Essentially the pintle is a bracket with a cylindrical bottom and a cradle for the gun on top; the cylindrical bottom fits into a hole in the tripod while the cradle holds the gun.
In furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
, a pintle is usually fitted to a caster
Caster
A caster is an undriven, single, double, or compound wheel that is designed to be mounted to the bottom of a larger object so as to enable that object to be easily moved...
; the pintle is then inserted into a base, fixing the caster
Caster
A caster is an undriven, single, double, or compound wheel that is designed to be mounted to the bottom of a larger object so as to enable that object to be easily moved...
to that base.
In rocketry
Rocket
A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...
, a pintle engine uses a single-feed fuel injector rather than the hundreds of smaller holes used in a typical rocket engine. This lowers the cost of engine manufacture while surrendering some performance. Grumman used the pintle-based Rocketdyne
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a United States company that designs and produces rocket engines that use liquid propellants. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, headquartered in Canoga Park, California, is a division of Pratt & Whitney, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation...
RS-18 for the Ascent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module
Apollo Lunar Module
The Apollo Lunar Module was the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft built for the US Apollo program by Grumman to carry a crew of two from lunar orbit to the surface and back...
. Notable modern uses are on the engines developed by SpaceX
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or more popularly and informally known as SpaceX, is an American space transport company that operates out of Hawthorne, California...
.
Pintle is also a common term used in the design of aircraft landing gears. It describes the attachment point between the landing gear structure and the aircraft structure. The pintle is the bolt around which the landing gear rotates when it is extended/retracted into/out of the aircraft. The pintle is a highly stressed component during landing manoeuvres and is often made from exotic metal alloys.